Share your location with your family

With Family Sharing, it's easy to share your location with family members in Find My Friends or the Messages app. You can even help family members locate their missing devices in Find My iPhone.

How it works

The family organizer sets up location sharing in Family Sharing settings. After location sharing is turned on, the organizer's location is automatically shared with everyone in the family group. Then each family member can choose whether or not to share their location. When you agree to share, your family members see your location in Find My Friends and Messages. And you can see where they're located too.

Plus, with location sharing enabled, if your device is lost or stolen, you can ask a family member to use Find My iPhone to help you locate it and get it back.

Location sharing isn't supported in South Korea and might be unavailable in other regions due to local laws.

Choose when to share

Family Sharing lets you decide whether or not you share your location with your family.

To see if you're sharing, follow these steps:

Tap Settings > [your name].

If you use iOS 11, tap Settings > [your name] > iCloud.

Tap Share My Location.

Tap [family member name] to share with that person.

To stop sharing your location, turn off Share My Location. This hides your location from all of your family members and your approved friends. And when you're ready to share your location again, you can turn it back on at any time.

Choose which device to share your location from

By default, the device that you used to sign in to Family Sharing is the one that shares your location. If you want to share your location from a different device:

Tap Settings > [your name].

Tap Family Sharing > Location Sharing.

Tap Share My Location > From.

Select the device that you want to share from.

Location sharing and Find My iPhone

If you join Family Sharing and choose to share your location with family members, they can find and secure a missing device for you.

Put your device in Lost Mode if it was already set up with a passcode.

If you don't share your location, family members can’t access location information about your devices. Without location information, family members can still help you. They can check your missing device's online or offline status, play a sound on the device, or put the device in Lost Mode.